Russian PSP Assist enables online payments by MIR cards

Assist Group, a major online payment service provider in Russia, provides online stores with the ability to process MIR cards, the national payment card system in Russia. Some of the acquiring banks are already connected, the rest is at the stage of testing and integration.

According to Assist, large companies such as McDonald’s, IKEA and Metro Cash & Carry already accept the MIR card, and the number of companies willing to accept online payments by MIR cards is growing. “We are currently connecting our customers to the payment system”, says Diana Polehina. “By the end of July we had more than a hundred requests for connection. The process is debugged, technical integration takes one or two days.” Among the clients of Assists are Google, Ozon, Wildberries, Otto, Mango, Puma and Auchan.

The creation of a national payment system

Last year, Russian authorities presented MIR, a payment card for the nation’s internal payment system. According to website RBTH, Russia wanted to create an autonomous financial system, as a response to the sanctions imposed against Russia by the US over Russia’s role in the Ukrainian crisis. International payment systems Visa and Mastercard ceased to process card payments for customers of several Russian banks.

Visa and MasterCard accept MIR

Russia thus launched a new national payment system and also revealed the accompanying payment card, called MIR (world). In April last year, Visa and MasterCard joined this payment system and last month, McDonald’s became the first American company to accept payments via the MIR card.